adventures in acting & stand-up

Archive for the tag “silent witnesses”

One of these people is Katie Porter (@EternalKatie). She lives in Beavercreek. I think that’s somewhere in America.

I think that because, when I sent her a message today to thank her for becoming my 2,000thfollower (yay!!), she replied, “Awesome!”, which suggests she’s American, doesn’t it. Also because she heard about me from a retweet by a Hollywood actor / producer / director.

Not him. That’s Stuart Laws, who I’m always going on about on here. I just thought it was time you had a look at him, in case you haven’t seen him in a comedy club yet, or visited his blog (http://stuchopslaws.wordpress.com – he’s put up a new post today with a couple of videos which I think are very funny. Especially the break-in one). No, Stuart did a tweet about me to Judd Apatow, who you’ve seen in loads of American films and TV shows.

This is Judd Apatow. He holds an entirely different camera to Stuart, and in an entirely different way. Which is possibly how he came to produce the movies Anchorman, Fun With Dick & Jane and The 40 Year Old Virgin, among many others. Actually, he directed the last one too. He also directed Knocked Up and Funny People, and… Well look, there’s all sorts of information about him on the internet if you want to know more. Suffice to say, I was thrilled that he chose to let the world know about TwitterQuest.

But others loved the idea, and Stuart’s original message has been retweeted all over America this evening. And Scandinavia, Ireland, Germany and goodness knows where else too. The new followers are still coming in. So, thank you Stu, thank you Katie, and thank you Judd. The latest heroes of TwitterQuest.

Oh, and thank you @bagtheneematoadwho, as this goes to press, is the latest of 2,078 followers.

By the way, Mr Laws is no shrinking violet in the film production stakes. Check out his hugely popular ‘Becoming Batman’ series on Youtube. It’ll open up a whole new world to you. Episode one (of many) is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZYc1G09c7E

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the tweet of someone who understands TwitterQuest. As I have said before, I’m aiming for pointlessness on a global scale. And I really think we can achieve that!

There’s been another burst of activity today, which has put 2,000 followers tantalisingly within grasp. This has been achieved by the tweets of friends I’ve actually met, new friends I’ve virtually met and a few… I’m sorry for using this term, but, well… ‘names’. They’re the people who bring in hundreds of new Silent Witnesses with one tweet. But everyone’s contribution is hugely appreciated. All (at time of writing) 1,745 followers are ‘names’ to me!

I’ve emailed a few (by which I mean fewer than 15 so far) much-followed people about this utterly pointless project. They’re either people I already respect, or in some cases, they’ve struck me as jolly types associated with technology, who I’d never have known about but for TwitterQuest. Some don’t reply, but a heartwarming number do. A Hollywood based comedian’s ‘people’ liked the idea but for some reason couldn’t pass my message on to the person I’d thought I was writing to. One technology type replied with “what’s in it for me?” , which rather took me by surprise. I said they’d probably be mentioned here, but mostly what was in it for them was fun. They replied with a list of links to something called apps (whatever they may be) which they wanted to sell.

It doesn’t work like that. Sorry. TwitterQuestis pointless. That’s the point.

No, the sort of people I want on board are people like @leehutchinson! And the comedian Mark Steel (http://www.marksteelinfo.com), who took the trouble to reply to my email with this:

Hello Richard, sounds splendidly useless, as soon as I remember I’ll follow you for no reason. Let’s see if you can catch up with Fry and Katy Perry. Cheers, mark.

Now, THAT is precisely the sort of might-do attitude I’m looking for!

He hasn’t tweeted for me yet, but he will. Or might. If only everyone displayed that level of commitment to futility!

A few days ago, the good people of Viz did another tweet for me (thank you; a lovely surprise), which took the total up to about 1,240. Today, I sent emails to broadcaster Andrew Collins (http://wherediditallgorightblog.wordpress.com) and actor / author / presenter (etc.) Emma Kennedy (http://www.emmakennedy.net), both of whom were kind enough to tell their followers about me.

So @RichardRycroft is trying to be the most followed person on Twitter who never Tweets. It’s just for fun. #ff

Thank you both. It’s a wonderful thing to see 500 people adding themselves to the movement in the space of a few hours.

And please be assured that when I promise to ‘follow back’ (as I believe it’s called) everyone who follows me, I don’t just have my account set to automate the process. I look at everyone’s profile and have found myself in some wonderful exchanges of personal messages (they’re not tweets) with people I have never met and probably never shall. That’s why, on a day like today, it takes quite a while for me to return the favour.

One of the unexpected benefits of this idiocy has been that I have found the world does seem to be mainly populated by good natured people after all. People who enjoy silliness and virtual silence and following nothing. People who choose to define themselves in their Twitter profiles by their religion, their politics, their sexuality, their job or their lifestyle (and many, many, many Dr Who fans). All lovers of silliness. My kind of people.

And many comedians and actors too. I was so excited today to find that two of my favourite actors have added themselves to the virtual calm. Tony Gardner (you’ve seen him as Michael in Lead Balloon) and Samuel West (who you’ve seen in, well, you know… all those great productions you’ve enjoyed so much) both signed up shortly after the Kennedy / Collins moment (as it shall forever be known). An honour to have you both aboard.

Now the, er…

After someone had retweeted for me earlier today, scouse_craig replied

Well, that stopped me in my tracks, I can tell you. TOTDS (the one that doesn’t tweet) has 10,570 followers, and follows just 42. That’s all I know. Their profile page has a link to BBC Radio 1’s website, but I can’t find any information on there about it, so maybe this is something that lapsed a while ago? Can anyone fill me in about it? Please leave a comment if you can.

This changes NOTHING!

It does give me a target to aim for, of course, and if the mighty national music station Radio 1 can achieve 10,000 followers, that just makes my 1,700 in three weeks all the more wonderful. Has TOTDS made new friends through Twitter? Has TOTDS had his / her world view improved by the experience? Well, clearly I don’t know. But I’m in competition with no-one and it’s too much fun to give up now. The more silence providers the better, I say. Let’s be quiet in harmony.

After Launching TwitterQuest (see the post before last, or click on https://richardrycroft.net/2010/12/28/twitterquest/), I managed, during those quiet days leading up to and just after the New Year, to attract a few extra followers (or, as I prefer to think of them, Silent Witnesses), thanks to friends doing a tweet or two on my behalf. Notably @DavidTurners (one of the guys behind the JoyPod podcast for gamers – more info at http://spong.com/joypod) and @davebromage (funny comedian and journalist, who has a blog here on WordPress, at https://davebromage.wordpress.com/). Many others tweeted too, including the comedians @joselby (http://www.joselby.com/), @ashleyfrieze (http://www.incredible.org.uk/), @stuchopslaws (http://stuchopslaws.wordpress.com/ as you probably know by now) and @philiphiggins (who doesn’t seem to have a website. Good Heavens. Odd chap). I’m incredibly grateful to everyone who’s joined in so far. Sorry if I haven’t mentioned you this time.

It was Dave Bromage whose tweet reached the attention of @VirginRacing, the official F1 Virgin Racing team (http://www.virginracing.com/). I switched off the machine last night, pretty pleased with my total of 136 followers. When I returned to it this morning, there were over 100 notifications in my email inbox, of new followers as a direct result of Virgin Racing tweeting about the cause to its almost 29,000 followers. But it didn’t end there. Followers retweeted and more came. And then the folks from Viz got involved.

With almost 67,000 followers, @VizTopTips (http://www.viz.co.uk/) must be one of the most retweeted Twitter users in the UK (and abroad, as it now appears), so I thought I’d let them know what I was up to. I thought the pointlessness of the challenge might appeal to them. I was right. Within half an hour of my email, they had very kindly told the world about me, and the new follower notifications flooded in! At the time of writing, I now have 547 followers.

By the way, there’s absolutely no commercial side to my TwitterQuest. I’m just acknowledging people who have joined in the fun, that’s all.

Here are some of my favourite comments which have been generated on Twitter today:

If you’d like an extra follower, follow @richardrycroft, who is aiming to be the most followed person never to have tweeted. Thank you 🙂 (@VirginRacing)

Now following @richardrycroft as amused by his anti-celeb anti-Klout approach to Twitter. (@TMT_Lawyer)

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FOLLOW @richardrycroft who provides a restful silence in the often noisy Twittersphere. (@VizTopTips)

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@richardrycroft Nice one Richard, hope it catches on! No need to reply to this message or re-tweet. (@David_Joseph)

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@richardrycroft But I bet every morning you wake up in a sweat and check Twitter to see who’s following/unfollowing 🙂 (@OnewordTF)

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Postmodern tweeters: @richardrycroft and @big_ben_clock(@CarkeysCoUK – and you might be interested to learn that @Big_ben_clock tweets the appropriate number of “BONG”s on the hour, every hour, to more than 78,000 followers. He / she / it doesn’t appear to follow anyone at all, but that didn’t stop me from signing up, and I would urge you to do the same!)

I refuse to follow @richardrycroft unless he gets ‘verified’. Otherwise, how do I know it’s him & not a scam to steal my personal identity? (@sexteta, who later followed me anyway. Maybe he looked at this blog thing and was reassured? Or perhaps it was a computer-savvy person’s joke that I didn’t understand?)

I love the idea that some people have started challenging one another to get a tweet out of me! In fact, I urge any tweeters reading this to consider adding something like “what would @richardrycroft say about this?” if you have characters to spare at the end of a tweet.

As promised, everyone who follows me is being followed back, or sent a ‘follow request’, depending on their security settings. On a day like today, that takes quite a while (and some days I don’t see my email at all – I don’t carry the internet on a phone in case it gets scratched, remember), so if I haven’t followed you within a few hours, please be assured that I shall. Curiously, while I get email notification about the vast majority of new followers, some slip through the net, so I do check the whole list from time to time as well. If you think I might have overlooked you, please leave a comment here, or contact me through Twitter. If you don’t want me to follow you, just ignore or delete me from that list, but PLEASE keep following me.

ps Just as I was about to publish this, both @VirginRacing and @DavidTurners tweeted about me again (thank you!) and brought another flurry of activity into the Rycroft home. As this goes to press, I can claim a TwitterQuest total of 642 and rising. One of the latest additions to the Silent Witnesses even tweeted this: